Don’t underestimate mobile

The development trend continues for mobile, the new engine driving business in recent years; in fact I’m getting lots of calls from people who want to develop apps on mobile devices.

Some entrepreneurs have a particular concern: “what are the possible risks in this type of project?”.

We discussed the main technical risks here a little while ago with Giuseppe, but in my opinion there are also other factors that can cause a project to fail, regardless of the abilities of the developers and the tools they’ll use.

I think that the biggest risk is to underestimate the difficulties of a project based on these new technologies. This can happen if you think you won’t have any trouble, maybe because:

the app seems simple, after all it only needs to do two or three things, we certainly don’t want to redo the whole business software system!

we’re aware of the problem; we’ve already implemented it in previous software.

This is even true for people who have developed solutions on mobile computers, because everything is different now: there are always new devices, each with its own operating system and its own programming language, and end-client expectations have grown as well.

Looking at people who have already started, I can’t help but say that those who were able to start out with an app for internal use, to get some experience, and better understand the critical issues that arise in this area, shielded themselves against these risks.

When this isn’t possible and the end client has already commissioned the app, I still recommend investing more time than usual into analyzing and defining your requirements. Then, if you want, we’re always here to share our experience with you.

If you have a project to work on, give me a call. If you don’t, it’s time to find one!